Unique Personal Collections: Where Scalpers Die Off in Droves
The value of community and how even bystanders can stave off scalper-rage.
Scalpers aren’t new. Hell, they’re not even creative. An educated guess for sure, but it’s easy to see how people have probably been stuffing trades with heavy rocks or snake oil for as long as we could barter.
Where there’s a profit to be made, there will be a scammer present. The more earning potential, the dicer things can become for buyers playing the long game. And my favorite hobby, Pokemon, is no different.
I always have to wonder if Nintendo, creator of appliances, knew their little Pokeymon TCG game would ever get this big, but here we are.
Collectors versus scalpers, a tale as old as time.
The largest multimedia franchise in the world, Pokemon has a towering marketability that encourages it to have kitchenware, plushies, and collectables of all sorts. Shortly after the inception of the Pokemon games in February 27, 1996, the Pokemon Trading Card Game released only a few months later in October.
And since that date, people have been ripping packs like no tomorrow in anticipation of their favorite card.
And in some’s opinion, a big resale value.
Pokemon card packs traditionally come in sets of 10 in English sets, with at least one guaranteed holo per pack. Whether or not that holo is worth more than a quarter is another story. There’s a small chance to pull what are known in the community as “hits”— full art shiny cards that catch the eye of even bystanders to the hobby.
And so, for decades, we’ve been pulling pack after pack from sets, collections of Pokemon and artwork mix-matched onto new TCG descriptions, attacks, and stats. Basically vomiting hundreds of dime-worth cards for the chance at that beautiful 15 dollar pull.
It recycles well-beloved content into arguably even more beloved tournaments, collectors halls, and the stadiums of eBay. It’s also how Pikachu has well over 50 cards, including promos, and how the game has persisted through decades of people aging out or growing disinterested.
Now, especially, many people have a lot of things to say about the recent sets and their scalpers. Hell, you can’t go five seconds without seeing someone talk about it.
After a disasterous release of Prismatic Evolutions, the latest set in Pokemon card collecting, it’s hard to see why anyone would even want to get into the hobby anymore, right? An Elite Trainer Box (ETB for short, has about 70 random cards), from Prismatic Evolutions will run you anywhere from 150-300$ as of the time writing this. There’s hardly a point in collecting until prices go down.
But, despite the scalpers, the community thrives in unexpected ways.
Since I’ve been collecting cards from my childhood, I’ve easily been able to find cards for much cheaper than anticipated. In fact, most of the cards I actually want would be harder to obtain at a card show than an affordable Charizard first edition holo, just because nobody seems to want them.
Some of the Buizel cards in the binder above are worth maybe five cents soaking wet, and others about the price of a few pizza slices.
I’ve been in the Pokemon online space for about two months now. And in that time, I’ve seen a lot of personal and “themed” collection. Everything from water-type based pages, to “Pokemon at Work”— which cutely detailed many Pokemon in everyday environments, highlighting how people often prefer their favorite cards over the most valuable.
A popular series gaining traction is by the community beloved Deep Pocket Monster, known as Pat, who hosts pack-openings and binder collection challenges on his channel. But a new twist he brings to the scene is the attempt to fill binders based off of the entire set and not individual cards. This often brings him down to the wire, where a .23 cent card is the difference between victory and utter defeat.
Throughout his challenges, Pat frequently comes across binder collections of all kinds, for individual Pokemon, sets, or just themes that people are enthusiastic about. And to every single one, he has nothing but praise. At the end of the day, this is a collector’s hobby from the heart, and the refresh to the scene he brings is extremely welcome.
And, yes, there are challenges that will make the poor man weep.
Throughout walking through tournament lobbies and convention floors, Pat has brushed shoulders with some of the biggest Poketubers in the community for head to head challenges with the card values ranging in the hundreds, and often it’s several hundred dollar cards that are the difference between a lucky subscriber and a happy Pat.
However, Pat’s challenges often have him scouring through collections of cheap cards and bulk— bringing new life to otherwise forgotten Pokemon as he tries desperately to fill a binder set. Otherwise, he risks having to give the entire binder to subscribers of the channel with a loss of often hundreds of dollars.
This “Good Guy Mr. Beast”, horrifying dubbed by my partner, is bringing positivity and fair-headedness into a hobby that has been overrun with greed, and I think we’d all do well to take a page from his binder and try to appreciate what we love collecting, rather than chasing a price tag. And the community is a better place for it.
His comments are full of encouragement and personal stories about the value of individual cards, people’s personal collections, and overall community engagement in the power of generosity. And maybe we could learn from that, too.
Collect only your favorites. Hold on tight to that single .50 cent card you love. And for the love of everything holy, never stop doing something just because someone is trying to make it worse.
Our world will be a more enthusiastic place for it.
